De Montfort University
university in Leicester, UK
De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) is a public university in Leicester, England. The university traces its origins to the Leicester School of Art, founded in 1870, and gained university status in 1992 under the Further and Higher Education Act. It is named after Simon de Montfort, a 13th-century Earl of Leicester who played a major role in the constitutional development of England.
The university has 23,155 students (as of 2024/25). The university is organized into three faculties: Business and Law; Health and Life Sciences; and Technology, Arts, and Culture.) It is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
In addition to its Leicester campus, the university opened a London campus in 2025 focused on postgraduate courses in business, digital technology, leadership and sustainability. The university also operates international campuses and teaching partnerships including DMU Dubai and collaborative programmes in Kazakhstan and Cambodia.
History
Origins
The university's origins are in the Leicester School of Art, established in 1870 on a voluntary basis. The school expanded in response to the changing needs of late 19th-century industry; leading to the introduction of subjects such as engineering, building and machine drawing. By 1897, it was clear the buildings being used were no longer suitable.
“De Montfort University” enters the record as university in Leicester, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Montfort, University and university can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“De Montfort University” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Montfort, University and university provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3551402. VIAF identifies the subject as 127160388. The Library of Congress control number is no94037548. Authority coordinates are 52.630, -1.139. 6 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1992, 2024 and 2025.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “De Montfort University”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow De Montfort University primary sources, De Montfort University archive and Montfort research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “De Montfort University”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “De Montfort University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.