2024: take five

These include at the Universities of Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh before becoming Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Nottingham in 2022 and then taking up the interim Vice-Chancellorship earlier this year.

She is currently a Non-Executive Director at UKRI (UK Research and Innovation), the UK’s largest public funding body for science, research and innovation. She is formerly Non-Executive Director at the University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust and Bristol North Somerset.

Jane was formerly a clinical academic and Professor of Maternal and Fetal Health in Edinburgh and Glasgow and Director of the Tommy’s Centre at the University of Edinburgh. Her award-winning research increased understanding of how labour starts and led to interventions which have made pregnancy and labour safer for women and babies.

Jane has chaired grant panels nationally and internationally including for the Wellcome Trust and for the National Institute for Health Research. She was a member of the Clinical Medicine panel for the 2021 REF and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

A strong advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education, Professor Norman was Vice Principal, Equality and Diversity/People and Culture for five years at the University of Edinburgh, leading on the university’s work on race and gender equality in collaboration with students, staff and the city. As Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Bristol, Professor Norman led a radical and innovative reshaping of dental education, propelling the Dental School in Bristol to the top quartile in student satisfaction in the UK and expanding on its civic mission.

Growing up in the North of England, Jane studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating in 1986. She is married with a grown-up daughter and son. For much of her academic career she has also worked as an NHS Consultant Obstetrician, initially in Glasgow and then Edinburgh.

2. Florence Boot Hall gets a modern makeover

The 2023/24 academic year saw Florence Boot Hall on University Park reopen following a year-long refurbishment programme, restoring the hall's natural beauty and enhancing its heritage.

Many of the hall's 200 rooms have undergone extensive transformations, with prospective students now able to choose from a range of options. Elsewhere, many of the communal areas have also had a glow up - for those of you who lived in the hall in the past, they may look almost unrecognisable!

We even hosted Florence Boot's great grandaughter Emma and relatives for a tour (image below, gathered in front of the heritage wall), to ensure the seal of approval from the family!

3. Nottingham ranked number one for graduate careers and over 20 subjects ranked in the UK Top 10 in the Times & Sunday Times Good University Guide

Among the many accolades celebrated during 2024; we were rated as the top university in the UK for graduate careers according to the HESA Graduate Outcomes survey. In fact, we’ve now been top for the past four years.

We were also delighted to see that The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025 ranked over 20 of our degree courses in the Top 10 in the UK!

The 24 UK Top 10 ranked subjects are:

Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering - Agriculture and Forestry - American Studies - Animal Science - Architecture - Building - Chemical Engineering - Classics and Ancient History - Criminology - East and South Asian Studies - Economics - Education - Electrical and Electronic Engineering - Food Science - German - History of Art - Architecture and Design - Liberal Arts - Mechanical Engineering - Natural Sciences - Pharmacology and Pharmacy - Social Policy - Social Work - Sports Science - Veterinary Medicine

Nottingham also rose two places in the papers' overall league table and associated guide, which provides prospective students and their families with essential information for making informed higher education choices, evaluating aspects from teaching quality and student experience to degree completion rates and graduate employment prospects. You can interrogate a fully searchable website with 70 subject tables, full interactive tables and additional features online. 

4. Research highlights

The university's world-class research continued to deliver real-world change during 2024.

April saw the 'Topping out ceremony' a significant milestone in the construction of a new £105million NHS National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) near Loughborough - a 70-bed, state-of-the-art and highly energy efficient new facility, run by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and part of the Government’s New Hospital Programme. Research, innovation and training will be led by academic partners the University of Nottingham and Loughborough University.

Our 50-year long reputation as pioneers in the field of MRI continues, as the UK's most powerful scanner took a step forward with the confirmation of the suppliers to design and build the new machine, which will be housed in our Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre on University Park.

'And finally', if you missed it, experts at the university have discovered how to create different colours of blue cheese! After discovering how the classic blue-green veining is created, a team of experts from the School of Life Sciences were able to create a variety of different fungal strains that could be used to make cheese with colours ranging from white to yellow-green to red-brown-pink and light and dark blues.