University maintains its nationally leading strengths in business and public engagement

Business and public engagement activities at the University of Southampton have again been recognised as amongst the best in England in a set of assessment results.

In the third round of the annual UK-wide Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF), the university has retained its top scores and is recognised as enabling ‘high’ or ‘very high’ engagement across all areas of assessment.

Southampton achieved the top rating of ‘very high engagement’ in four categories: public and community engagement; IP and commercialisation; working with business; and working with the public and third sector. It achieved the second highest rating, ‘high engagement’, for research partnerships; local growth and regeneration; and CPD and graduate start-ups.

These results put Southampton at or above the average in all areas of assessment compared to other similar institutions (those that are in the group of 17 very large, research-intensive and broad-discipline universities in England).

Professor Mark Spearing, the university’s Vice-President for Research and Enterprise, said: “I am delighted that the university continues to deliver strong performance in Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise (KEE), as measured by the KEF.

“Our strength across all seven areas of the KEF indicates the benefits of our diverse KEE ecosystem, and also reflects the hard work of our equally diverse community, and the relevance of our triple helix strategy, to exploit the synergies between KEE, Education and Research.”

The full results of KEF 2023 are available on the Research England website.