Boost for quality of Heythrop’s research

The quality of theological research undertaken by Heythrop College has dramatically improved, according to a major assessment of the expertise of British universities.

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) – which releases its results every five years – found that the college came top of British Catholic institutions for theological research.

It ranks research undertaken by higher education institutions, grading them with one to four stars, or “unclassified”. It is up to each institution how many staff put forward research for consideration, with the country’s largest universities able to field hundreds or even thousands of research staff. The results inform the level of grants to be awarded to institutions by funding councils.

Heythrop scored a significantly higher mark than the last time the results were published in 2008 when none of the Jesuit-run college’s research was considered world-leading. This time 22 per cent of Heythrop’s research has been classed in this four-star category.

While the college specialises in both theology and philosophy, it did not submit research in the latter subject. The college stated, however, that its results reflected the “combined work of philosophy, theology and related subjects”.

Currently part of the University of London, Heythrop is in talks with St Mary’s University, Twickenham, which appeared lower down in the REF rankings in theology, with 9 per cent of that research graded as world-leading.

Top of the list for expertise in theological research is the University of Durham, which has a Centre for Catholic Studies that has undertaken research on ecumenism. Durham also came top in 2008.

Other Catholic universities, Leeds Trinity and Newman, occupied the bottom two places for expertise in theological research, according to the table compiled by the Times Higher Education supplement. Overall, however, all the Catholic universities, traditionally teaching-led rather than research-focused, improved their position from last time.

Elsewhere, following submission of historical research for the first time, 12 per cent of St Mary’s University expertise in this field was graded as world leading. The university also performed well in sport, where 15 per cent of research was given four stars. However, in educational research, St Mary’s finished bottom of the subject list, as it did in the field of philosophy, although this was the first time it had submitted research for that subject.