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A 200-year story in the making: New publications to launch for UCL’s Bicentenary

19 March 2025

Three new publications will be released in 2026 to mark UCL’s 200th anniversary, tracing two centuries of ground-breaking discoveries, architectural history, and generational stories of staff and student life.

Black and white photo of UCL students with their mascot Phineas in the 1930s

Photo: UCL students with their mascot Phineas in the 1930s, UCL Special Collections.

Student London: The untold history of student life in the UK’s capital city

Georgina Brewis and Sam Blaxland talk about their new book Student London: A New History of Higher Education in the Capital.

The foundation of UCL as London’s first university in 1826 is widely acknowledged as a significant moment in Britain’s history. Most studies of London, however, neglect higher education while students are generally only minor characters in existing university histories. Yet, students have formed a significant part of London’s population, and their experiences are worthy of investigation. 

black and white photo of students protesting against education cuts in London in the 1970s
Photo: Students protesting against education cuts 1970s, IOE Archive.

We have researched student life, not just at the original London University (known as UCL since 1836), but at the many formerly independent higher education institutions that later merged with UCL: the Middlesex Hospital Medical School (1835), the School of Pharmacy (1842), the London School of Medicine for Women/Royal Free Hospital Medical School (1874), the London Day Training College/Institute of Education (1902), the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (1915), the Institute of Archaeology (1937) and the Institute of Neurology (1950).

This approach involved identifying and analysing a huge range of source material, from official reports to college magazines, newspapers and handbooks, and hundreds of published and unpublished student memoirs, diaries and letters. This also led to a brand-new collection of oral history testimonies with London students from the 1940s through to the 2020s.

London has always presented both opportunities and challenges for those who come to live, work and study here. For example, students have long enjoyed London’s vibrant nightlife from taverns in the 1840s, to jazz bars after the Great War, or mega-clubs in the 1990s. However, some students have also faced loneliness in a big, uncaring city, struggled with their mental health, been victims of crime, or suffered racial discrimination.

Student London engages in much greater depth with London’s imperial history than earlier studies, exploring the significance of international students and presenting an authentic story of diverse student experiences in London across two centuries.

This book is the major outcome of a research and engagement project called Generation UCL: Two Hundred Years of Student Life in London, conducted in partnership with the Office Vice Provost Advancement and Students' Union UCL.
 

Meet the team

Two colour, portrait photos of Georgina Brewis and Sam Blaxland
Professor Georgina Brewis and Dr Sam Blaxland are historians based in IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. Student London, which will be published by UCL Press, is the product of their combined expertise in the history of students, youth culture, political and social movements, oral history, and archival research. 

After updating UCL’s institutional history The World of UCL in 2018, Georgina Brewis conceived of a new way to tell the story of London’s first university through the eyes of students. Sam Blaxland joined the team in 2022 from Swansea University, fresh from writing a new post-war history of that institution.
 

UCL200 Commemorative Volume: Celebrating the past, present and future of our collective research impact

Virginia Mantouvalou, Lead Editor of the UCL200 Commemorative Volume, discusses how she has been bringing together colleagues from across UCL to explore 200 years of ground-breaking research and discoveries.

Through the UCL200 Commemorative Volume, we aim to inform, enlighten and possibly surprise a wide range of readers, including current and former staff and students, visitors to UCL, and the public about the strength, breadth and impact of UCL’s research – past, present and future.

To create the Volume, we called for submissions from across UCL’s 11 faculties, and from this, we have selected around 100 authors with expertise across a very wide range of disciplines. Selecting and co-ordinating 100 submissions was a real challenge, but I am grateful for the support of Faculty Deans, the UCL200 team, a fantastic Multidisciplinary Advisory Group of senior academics, and our project manager, Robert Davies.

The pieces that will be included in the book do not, of course, present an exhaustive picture of UCL’s research history and landscape, but we hope they will provide an insight into some of the pioneering discoveries and ideas of our colleagues over the last 200 years.

The Commemorative Volume aims to show how, by embracing innovation, collaboration, experimentation, and new ideas, UCL’s research has had a lasting impact across the world. We want to celebrate what has been achieved so far and explore where we are now, but we also want to look forward - highlighting our cutting-edge interdisciplinary research to better understand and address society’s future challenges.

Learning about my colleagues’ extraordinary work and its societal impact has been truly inspiring and energising. I’m very much looking forward to sharing this with everyone for our UCL200 celebrations.

Meet the team

Photo of Virginia Mantouvalou
Virginia Mantouvalou is a Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law at the UCL Faculty of Law and Co-Director of the UCL Institute for Human Rights.

Virginia was selected by a panel as Lead Editor of the UCL200 Commemorative Volume after responding to a call for expressions of interest for UCL colleagues with academic editorial experience.

Her work on the Volume is supported by the UCL200 Programme Team, particularly Lucy Briggs, Professor Dame Hazel Genn and Sarah Sterlini, Dr Paul Ayris and Lara Speicher of UCL Press, Faculty Deans and UCL200 Faculty Champions, Project Manager Robert Davies, Tania Trosini P&P Office, and a Multidisciplinary Advisory Group of senior academics, including Professors Lynn Ang, Georgina Brewis, Faye Gishen, Nicola Miller, Geraint Rees, Albert Weale, and Jonathan Wolff.

 

Survey of London: An architectural history of UCL’s Bloomsbury campus

Amy Spencer and Colin Thom introduce the Survey of London’s forthcoming monograph, the first comprehensive account of UCL’s buildings in Bloomsbury from the 1820s to the present day.

As we commemorate the bicentenary of UCL’s foundation, this landmark publication will chart the architectural history of UCL and the evolution of its Bloomsbury campus - the historic core and symbolic focus of the university’s estate.

Colour photo of students walking up to the UCL Wilkin's building
Photo: UCL’s Wilkins Building. Taken for the Survey of London's monograph by Chris Redgrave.

Based on extensive original research, it will be included as a monograph in the Survey of London, a renowned series of volumes running from the 1890s to document the buildings of London. This book will uphold the Survey’s tradition of presenting readable histories integrated with specially commissioned photography and new architectural illustrations.

The monograph will examine the adaptation and development of UCL’s buildings in parallel with changes in education, society and technology. It will also provide new insights into the work of UCL’s architecture professors, such as Thomas Leverton Donaldson and Sir Albert Richardson, who were responsible for architectural work across the campus from the 1840s to the 1960s.

A Tudor niche, a hollowed out arch in a red brick wall in the UCL Quadrangle North West Wing
We have made some fascinating discoveries along the way. Our research on the North-West Wing of UCL’s Main Quadrangle alerted us to the possible survival of a Tudor niche (a hollowed-out space in a wall, often used for displaying objects or statues). The niche had been salvaged from the Royal Dockyard in Deptford and placed in the entrance hall of the Bartlett School of Architecture in 1955.

Since 1955, there have been many adaptations to the North-West Wing and, in 2004, the old entrance hall was converted into a seminar room, with the brick niche concealed and boxed in with plasterboard. We were able to trace the likely location of this important monument, working with UCL Estates to temporarily remove the plasterboard to reveal the niche.

Photo above: Tudor niche found in the UCL Geography Department. Photograph by Chris Redgrave for the Survey of London.
 

Meet the team

Two colour, portrait photos of Colin Thom and Amy Spencer
Colin Thom and Dr Amy Spencer are the lead authors for the Survey of London monograph, which will be published by UCL Press. Colin is Director of the Survey of London at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture, where he also teaches architectural history and theory. Amy is a historian working on the Survey of London, and completed her doctorate on UCL’s architectural history from 1825 to 1939 in 2021.

They are collaborating on the research and writing with Survey of London colleagues, namely Dr Sarah Dowding, Dr Emily Mann, Dr Rebecca Preston and Dr Aileen Reid, and in-house illustrator, Helen Jones, who is preparing bespoke drawings and designing the entire book. Find out more about the Survey of London in this short film.

A grant from the Bartlett’s Architecture Research Fund has enabled them to commission Chris Redgrave, a specialist architectural photographer, to contribute to the monograph. The core team is working closely with UCL Special Collections, Archives & Records, UCL Art Museum and UCL Press.

 

About UCL Press

Student London: A New History of Higher Education in the Capital and the Survey of London monograph will be published by UCL Press and available in Open Access form – so they will be free to download online as well as being sold in print. UCL Press are also providing publishing and production support for the UCL200 Commemorative Volume.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary in June, UCL Press was established as the UK’s first fully open access university press in 2015. Their innovative model has seen their books and journals downloaded around the world over 18 million times. Find out more about UCL press.

About UCL200

In 2026, UCL will celebrate its 200th anniversary with the UCL200 programme - an exciting line-up of activities and events to celebrate our bicentennial year.