Queen's University Belfast
public research university in Belfast, United Kingdom
The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (Irish: Ollscoil na Banríona; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of the Queen's University of Ireland and opened four years later, together with University of Galway (as Queen's College, Galway) and University College Cork (as Queen's College, Cork).
Queen's offers approximately 300 academic degree programmes at various levels. The current president and vice-chancellor is Ian Greer. The annual income of the institution for 2024–25 was £493.8 million, of which £112.4 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £511.5 million.
Queen's is a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, Universities UK and Universities Ireland. The university is associated with two Nobel laureates and one Turing Award laureate.
History
Queen's University Belfast has roots in the Belfast Academical Institution, which was founded in 1810 and which remains as the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. The present university was first chartered as "Queen's College, Belfast" when it was associated with the simultaneously founded Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College, Galway on 30 December 1845 as part of the Queen's University of Ireland – founded to encourage higher education for Catholics and Presbyterians, as a counterpart to Trinity College Dublin, then an almost exclusively Anglican institution. The institution's name directly honored the reigning British Monarch, Queen Victoria, in August 1849 by making an official royal visit to the Belfast campus with Prince Albert, where she signed the college's official roll book to commemorate its opening.
“Queen's University Belfast” enters the record as public research university in Belfast, United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Queen's, University and Belfast can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Queen's University Belfast” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Queen's, University and Belfast provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q877925. VIAF identifies the subject as 155630332. The Library of Congress control number is n79081359. Authority coordinates are 54.584, -5.935. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1845, 2024, 1810 and 1849.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. 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.
- 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 “Queen's University Belfast”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Queen's University Belfast primary sources, Queen's University Belfast archive and Queen's 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 “Queen's University Belfast”?
- 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 “Queen's University Belfast” 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.