The Queen awards Regius professorships

The Queen has agreed to award twelve new Regius Professorships to mark the Diamond Jubilee year.

Receiving the title of Regius Professor is a rare honour, designed to reflect an exceptionally high standard of teaching and research at an institution. Only two Regius Professorships have been created in the last century.

In the past, Regius Professorships were created when a university chair was founded or endowed by a Royal patron; they were limited to a handful of the ancient universities of the United Kingdom and Ireland, namely Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Trinity College, Dublin.

The Queen agreed to bestow the awards after taking advice from Ministers, who, in this special case, were in turn advised by a panel of eminent academics, led by Sir Graeme Davies, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of London. The other panel members were Lord Broers of Cambridge (former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and President of the Royal Academy of Engineering), Lord Rees of Ludlow (former Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and President of the Royal Society) and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (former Principal of the University of Edinburgh and President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh).

The twelve new titles of Regius Professor are to be held by:

- University of Dundee – Life Sciences

- Imperial College, London – Engineering

- London School of Economics and Political Science – Economics

- The Open University – Open Education

- University of Manchester – Physics

- Royal Holloway, University of London – Music

- University of Essex – Political Science

- King’s College London – Psychiatry

- University of Reading – Meteorology and Climate Science

- University of Southampton – Computer Science

- University of Surrey – Electronic Engineering

- University of Warwick – Mathematics