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Durham University Business School

business school and faculty of Durham University

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ5316581 ↗
Source-derived summary

Durham University Business School (DUBS) is the business school of Durham University, a collegiate public research university in Durham, England. The school holds triple accreditation from AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS. Following a 1963 report on management education by Lord Franks, the school began teaching in 1965, making it one of the oldest business schools in the UK alongside Alliance Manchester Business School. The school contains the departments of accounting, economics, finance, and management and marketing, as well as twelve research centres.

History

Business teaching at Durham University dates back to 1913, when a faculty of commerce was established at Armstrong College in the Newcastle division of the then-federal university. In 1963 this, along with the rest of the Newcastle division, became part of the newly constituted Newcastle University, leaving Durham without a business school. However, Durham University had established the Business Research Unit (BRU) in Durham in 1960 under the auspices of the Department of Economics and in collaboration with the Department of Psychology to carry out business and management-related research, under the direction of Alan Odber.

In 1963, the Franks Report recommended the establishment of two major business schools in London and Manchester (which became the London Business School and the Alliance Manchester Business School) and, crucially for Durham, minor business schools elsewhere in the country as warranted by demand. Charles Baker, a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Durham since 1961 and a member of the BRU, used this to argue for the establishment of a business school. He was able to obtain funding from the Foundation for Management Education (FME) for two lectureships within the BRU in order to offer post-experience courses to managers. A precursor to these courses was the Advanced Management Program run in 1964 at Bede College, Durham by lecturers from Harvard Business School, before the first courses offered by the BRU, under the name of Durham University Business School, were launched at Easter 1965, also at Bede College.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Durham University Business School” is business school and faculty of Durham University. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Durham, University and Business, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1963, 1965, 1913, 1960—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965. For this dossier, Durham, University and Business is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “business school and faculty of Durham University” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5316581. VIAF identifies the subject as 132082036. The Library of Congress control number is n87882749. Authority coordinates are 54.764, -1.586. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1965, 1913 and 1960.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Durham University Business School”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Durham University Business School primary sources, Durham University Business School archive and Durham research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Durham University Business School”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Durham University Business School” 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.