Colchester and University

About Colchester:

Colchester is Britain’s oldest recorded town (pop. 120,000). It was once the largest city in Roman Britain. It is located 55 miles from London with excellent road (A12 from M25 London Orbital) and rail links (from London Liverpool Street) and is a mere 30 miles from London Stansted Airport. It is a city that has a strong cultural heritage with bands like Blur, The Prodigy, and Jamiroquai coming from Colchester and the surrounding area. It is also an area of outstanding area of natural beauty and has an art gallery, theatre, world famous zoo, leisure centre, and some particularly fine museums.

About the University

The University of Essex was established in the 1960’s like Warwick, York, and Sussex Universities. It is situated in the beautiful 200-acre Wivenhoe Park (2 miles from Colchester town centre). There are 8800 FT and PT students (>4000 on campus) at the University and over 40% of student population are international students. The University has an outstanding reputation for research excellence, particularly in the Social Sciences. There are 17 Academic Departments including Psychology. The University is ranked in the top ten among Universities in Britain for research and in the 2001 RAE 77% of Departments were rated grade 5 or 5*. It also has some unique landmarks such as the Towers which are the tallest brick buildings in Britain and the library which features some interesting paternoster lifts!
The Department of Psychology at Essex is a medium sized department with 20 FT Academic staff. It is highly rated for research (RAE 5A) and teaching and has 460 FT/PT Undergraduate/Postgraduate Students, 4 Research groups including the Social and Health Psychology Research Group. It has excellent facilities in a purpose-built building.