REF RESULTS 2014

On 18 December 2014 HEFCE published the results of the 10 Units of Assessment which SOAS entered in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. The table below displays the results for all 10 Units.

There were some very positive outcomes for SOAS research in REF2014:

• Music, which was already ranked highly, rose to 5th in the UK, with over half of its publications judged world-leading;
• History of Art and Archaeology saw a dramatic rise up the league tables, from 17th to 8th (out of 25), coming in the top 5 nationally for the quality of its publications;
• Linguistics made a significant improvement, moving up the league tables with a particularly impressive rise to 7th out of 22 on world-leading publications;
• Law also rose from 33rd to 28th out of 67, with a particularly sharp rise in the proportion of its publications judged world-leading (rising from 4% in 2008 to 31% in 2014, placing it 5th in the UK for research output);
• Study of Religions held its league table position at 11th out of 33 nationally, and was judged to have produced the 2nd highest proportion of world-leading and internationally excellent publications in the UK.

On the day the results were released SOAS Director Professor Paul Webley said: ‘There is more work to be done to analyse the results and identify areas for improvement. We will continue to build on recent positive developments such as the launch of our China and South Asia institutes and our growing philanthropic support, including that from the Alphawood Foundation and the MBI Al Jaber Foundation.’

2014