People, Culture and Environment (PCE) pilot exercise – participating institutions 

We have selected the following 40 institutions to be involved in making submissions to the PCE pilot exercise. We have included institutions from across the whole of the UK and that give us a broad range of different:  

  • submission sizes  
  • breadth of provision  
  • experience of participation in previous REF exercises  

These are the 40 HEIs that have been selected to participate:  

  • Anglia Ruskin University 
  • Aston University 
  • Bath Spa University 
  • Bishop Grosseteste University 
  • Buckinghamshire New University 
  • Cardiff University 
  • Edge Hill University 
  • Edinburgh Napier University 
  • Health Sciences University
  • Institute of Cancer Research, London 
  • Keele University 
  • Leeds Arts University 
  • Liverpool John Moores University 
  • London Business School 
  • Manchester Metropolitan University 
  • Newcastle University 
  • Nottingham Trent University 
  • Royal College of Music 
  • Royal Conservatoire of Scotland 
  • Solent University 
  • Swansea University 
  • Teesside University 
  • Ulster University 
  • University for the Creative Arts 
  • University of Bath 
  • University of Birmingham 
  • University of Central Lancashire 
  • University of Derby 
  • University of Dundee 
  • University of Essex 
  • University of Glasgow 
  • University of Huddersfield 
  • University of Oxford 
  • University of Plymouth 
  • University of Southampton 
  • University of Suffolk 
  • University of the Arts London 
  • University of West London 
  • University of Worcester 
  • University of York

What is expected from participating HEIs?  

We have selected a broad range of institutions to be involved in the PCE pilot exercise; this means we have included a breadth of submission sizes, a range and breadth of provision, and institutions from across the whole of the UK. 

Participating institutions will make submissions to at least one of the pilot Units of Assessment (UoAs) with many institutions making submissions to multiple UoAs. This will allow us to develop a broad understanding of the differences in subject areas and if there are any economies of scale when working across multiple UoAs. One of the objectives of the PCE pilot exercise is to gather evidence on the administrative effort required for the assessment of PCE in the REF exercise. Participating HEIs will provide feedback on the feasibility of scaling up PCE assessment in the full REF 2029 exercise, for example giving input on: 

  • the level of effort/staff time that went into the preparation of each submission 
  • what worked well and what could be improved 
  • which indicators were straightforward to work with and which were problematic 
  • what (if any) other indicators not tested in the pilot should also be considered