King's Law achieves top ranking in official REF 2014 results
On 18 December 2014, it was announced that The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London was ranked top in the UK for world-leading research, above Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and UCL.
King's has the highest GPA across all UK law schools, with the highest quality submission and the highest proportion of world-leading 4* research.
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, is a process of expert review to assess the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. King’s is immensely proud of its achievement in Law. The results revealed that 100% of Law impact case studies and 84% of outputs were rated 3-4*, where 4* represents world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
The Dickson Poon School of Law submitted 42 faculty members– eight of which were Early Career Researchers - to the Law Unit of Assessment as part of the REF submission made in November 2013.
Source: Times Higher Education REF ranking by subject | 2014 rank order by GPA | Institution | FTE staff submitted | % of 4* research activity | GPA | Research power |
| 1 | King's College London | 34 | 54 | 3.44 | 117 |
| 2 | LSE | 63 | 53 | 3.40 | 214 |
| 3 | Durham | 24 | 44 | 3.34 | 81 |
| 4 | Ulster | 19 | 45 | 3.33 | 63 |
| =5 | UCL | 47 | 50 | 3.32 | 156 |
| =5 | York | 10 | 46 | 3.32 | 33 |
| 7 | Cambridge | 76 | 44 | 3.31 | 251 |
| 8 | Leeds | 29 | 41 | 3.27 | 95 |
| 9 | Bristol | 39 | 41 | 3.25 | 127 |
| =10 | Oxford | 109 | 40 | 3.23 | 352 |
The BBC revealed the Law School's top position alongside other individual subject areas:
BBC Education website
In the same article Universities Minister Greg Clark said: 'Britain's outstanding reputation in research is founded on excellence.'
'A rigorous and unflinching review by fellow experts assures that excellence, this is why the REF is such a crucial driver of quality.'
Official REF rankings
Visit the REF 2014 website for the official figures on the Law Unit of Assessment REF 2014 results: UoA 20 results (Law)
Further information